Brick wrote: "The dance is a living thing expressed through the bodies and hearts of those dancing it, it is not a dead "thing" sitting in a jar of formaldehyde to be preserved. Of course, this is not a rejection of the great music, culture and dance of the golden era of tango, but a questioning of those who seem to want to limit tango to only "what was."
To a relatively new inductee into Tango, one of the most frustrating aspects is a lack of definition or even authoritative guide lines. A hip pocket survey amongst fairly long standing practitioners and teachers, gained responses that: "Tango is a feeling"; "the music", "the steps"; "steps and music"; and many other indefinable definitions. The question posed was how do I know when I'm dancing Tango and more importantly, when do I know that I have passed over the line from dancing Tango to not dancing Tango? How on earth can something be preserved if there's no understandable description. I guess I view the many dance genre as akin to Breeds. Each should be preserved, if not for it's beauty/artistic or cultural value, then just by reason of diversity. So whilst I am can readily accept Brick's concept of dance evolution, I am totally opposed to that concept in terms of Dance Genre. Apply the open evolutionary principle to say dog breeding and down the road we would see but one breed. No more Bulldogs, Dobermanns or Chihuahuas .... Gone! (If you believe that restricting oneself to such a defined boundary as a Breed Standard, curtails creativity, experimentation and development...ask a breeder.) So, increasingly when I go to a Milonga, I sit out half of it (if I happen to have the dexterity to put up with the music) and dance and enjoy the other half when the mood and the music touches my soul. As you can probably discern, I don't regard dancing Tango as a sport or exhibition; but as a transcendental moment with another human being to which I am attracted. If Tango could be measured, I would find the gap between the beginning of the measure and the end, to be so vast that the only shared ingredient would be the name. I think it's somewhere in this reasoning of mine that I get quite disturbed when this thing that I love and cherish more than almost all else, is subjected to change that I can't accept. And it seems I might never accept. I say to you Brick, don't steal the love of my life. Get your own and call it Lucille, Jennifer, anything but Tango! Just my humble opinion. Anton _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
